


Fall Term Blues

by Atticsinthecloset



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, College AU, F/M, Gen, M/M, Military Veteran Shiro, Slow Burn, There will probably be some references to self harm later on, This is shitty and I don't know where it's going, nonbinary pidge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-10-31 14:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10901136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atticsinthecloset/pseuds/Atticsinthecloset
Summary: Keith works at the campus bookstore, putting him in the middle of life's shenanigans. Things ensue. Whether they're hilarious or something else has yet to be seen.





	1. Work Sucks

Hot Latino Guy walked in at about 10:20 AM, whirling in with the kind of panic that stayed mostly on college campuses.

“Leave your bag by the door,” Keith said just loudly enough for the other guy to hear him. Hot Latino Guy scrambled back to the corner near the door and dropped his slim backpack with a loud thud, running deeper into the store.

Keith sighed over the deep quiet over the nearly vacuous bookstore and took out his phone, just to check if anyone had sent him anything. Shiro’s stepmom had (overly excitedly) promised to involve him in her organization of a surprise birthday for Shiro, but she was known for forgetting to get in touch with people past the planning stages of anything. It was the hour when there was absolutely nothing to do. The only people on campus were in class so he didn’t need to put on his fake people skills smile, and the only thing he ever used his goddamn phone for was calling and texting, so he was left to simply stand there and go over vocabulary in his head.

Hot Latino Guy was in front of him in a moment, slamming a single scantron sheet on the counter with a look of absolute terror on his face, sweat rolling down his skin, his hair in absolute disarray.

“That will be twenty-five cents,” Keith said, his voice scratchy and underused.

Hot Latino Guy shuffled his hands in his pockets before putting the coin on the counter, the sharp ring echoing through the room.

“Would you like a receipt?”

“NO!” Hot Latino Guy yelled as he grabbed the paper back and ran back to pick up his bag to head back out the door.

Keith turned to look out the wall of windows behind him to see the poor guy booking it toward the science building. Just then a woman walked in through the door carrying two cups of coffee. She looked at Keith “what’s up with that guy?”

He shrugged “late for an exam, probably.”

She shook her head as she walked over to Keith, setting one of the cups onto the counter, right next to a small box of smelly markers. He took it, saying “Shay, you really don’t have to keep getting me this every morning I’m here.”

She shrugged “well, you always seem to pay me back with your rousing conversation.”

Keith gave her a smirk from behind the cup as he started drinking.

He’d met Shay the year before when she’d sat next to him in Shakespeare Lit, and she had gleefully decided to pull him under her wing ever since. She was only a year or two older then he was, but the difference is huge when you’re new to college life and have no idea what you’re doing. She invited him to almost everything, from her younger brother’s bat mitzvah to hockey games (she was obsessed), and he talked to her in the way he’d really only talked to Shiro: like he wasn’t being judged. She had the kind of personality that made you feel safe and loved with a simple word or gesture, and that was something Keith found extraordinary.

She said, “Did you see The Walking Dead last night? Well I did, and it was absolutely crazy what Ri-“

The door opened again, and two people rushed in, one short and small, the other tall and large, dropping their bags and rushing into the store, and in mere moments they were handing the strips of paper to Keith. He started to say “that’ll be twenty-five cents each,” but the shorter one slammed a dollar onto the counter before the two of them got their bags.

“Shit, Hunk,” the short one said, nearly out of breath, “I dunno if we’re gonna make it in time.” The tall one simply ran out the door.

“Bye, Hunk!” Shay shouted. Keith saw Hunk wave back at her through the window as he and his companion ran in the same direction that Hot Latino Guy had gone earlier.

Keith looked at Shay, the puzzle coming together “so _that’s_ the guy you’ve been telling me about.”

Shay blushed “maybe.”

Keith continued to pry into the subject of Hunk (what kind of name is that), while she tried to derail the conversation and go back to her nerdy love for horror film before she checked her phone “well, I’d better get to class. Don’t forget about movie night Friday.”

Keith said goodbye as she left the store, leaving him to the empty room.


	2. College Sucks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance regrets. Just ragrets. He might as well get the tattoo.

Lance hated academia with every cell that lived and died in his body. Learning was interesting enough, and the people were great and honestly the best part of anything, really, but the actual “school” part of school? 

Pidge had yet to stop laughing at his misfortune “man, I can’t fuckin’ believe you thought the answer to that question was-“

Pidge then laughed so hard she started having difficulty breathing, and was lurching around like she had a terrible bout of hiccups. 

Lance muttered angrily about peeping over shoulders and gremlins.

“And I can’t believe we actually made it before Professor O’Brien closed the door on us. I don’t even want to think of what could have happened,” Hunk said. 

Lance groaned “guys, do you not even realize what this means? I am going to fail the class I’m the best at. And this isn’t even Grad school or anything like that! I am never going to hear the end of it from my brothers. Or my sisters. Or my parents. Or my-“

“Oh my god, Lance,” Pidge momentarily stopped laughing “get your stapler out of the jello for a second. It was the first exam of the term. You’ll get your grade up. And it just goes to show you that that’s what happens when you play Overwatch twenty- four seven instead of actually reading the amazingly expensive textbook.”

Lance crossed his arms and made an outright pouty face, which sent Pidge into barely contained chortles. 

“Hey, does anyone else have a serious need for coffee right now?” Hunk asked. 

Lance shoved his hands in his pants pockets “Hunk, what kind of question is that? The tiny fuck barrel over here never sleeps and I have an essay due at midnight, of course we want coffee.”

Pidge raised her eyebrows “’tiny fuck barrel?’ Lance, we have to work on your skills.”

“What? No.”

“Lance, you named your iguana Aquaman.”

The two of them kept bickering as Hunk stared at his phone, and by the time they had gotten to the door of the bookstore Pidge’s overfilled backpack was starting to seriously hurt her shoulders. 

“No Starbucks?” Lance questioned.

Hunk shook his head “my mom’s got the car until I’m done with classes today, and it’s, like, a half a mile away.”

Lance and Pidge gave off a collective shrug. 

Lance hadn’t ignored the cashier from earlier. He had simply… overlooked him. All Lance knew about the guy were two things. One, he was bored at his job and two, he was absolutely irritating. Lance couldn’t quite point to it, but something about the guy had made him want to shove the guy in a trash can. Which was why, when they stepped inside the store, he was infuriated to find that the guy was still behind the counter. It was also why he immediately set his sights on torturing the guy. 

Lance squared his shoulders forward, and let out a forced, over exaggerated, boisterous laugh. 

Pidge and Hunk looked at him kind of weird, but he ignored them. “Oh my god, no way. Do you actually think you can pull off a mullet? With a beanie?” He did internally cringe at that though. It had been meaner than he’d been going for. 

Mullet Guy frowned, but didn’t say anything. Lance shrugged, and followed his two friends to the small café in the corner of the store. 

And after orders, before the retrieval of their backpacks, Mullet Guy murmured “nice anime pin, dick.”

Lance’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, and his face went red in mortification. He took a sip of his complicated latte before recoiling at the burning of his tongue. 

 

Allura sighed heavily over her mug of tea. 

“Well,” someone said in an Australian accent, “you seem to be in dire straits.”

Allura looked up to her fellow professor with an expression of barely continued emotion, which Coran was clearly not prepared for. 

“I don’t know if I can do this,” she said breathily. 

He sat next to her at the empty table in the empty cafeteria “do what?”

“This,” she simply stated, moving her arms to make a gesture that was very open to interpretation. “This is what he should be doing with me. Stressing over errors in syllabuses, Luncheons between classes, I just- I just miss him.”

Ah. Coran had mourned with the whole of the campus’s ecosystem at the death of Allura’s father, Head of the English Department and beloved instructor. Coran had been good enough friends with him, as they had known each other for so long. Alfor Altea had been a good man, and could only imagine the pressure of his daughter having to work in the same profession, and place, as her late father. 

Coran took a moment and remembered something so far away it might as well have been from a faraway picture. “You’ll be okay, Allura.”

She nodded, taking in a deep breath. 

She could only hope he was right.


End file.
